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HP OpenVMS Systems Documentation

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HP Pay per use (PPU) User's Guide for versions 8.x > Appendix A Special Considerations

Inactive Partitions in PPU Systems

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Baseline usage for the PPU program is included in the minimum monthly payment. Your baseline usage is defined in your Master Lease Agreement with HP. Inactive partitions in PPU systems are covered under baseline usage.

NOTE: An inactive partition is reported as “IDLE” in the measurement “Method” column, on the PPU web portal report.

An inactive partition has all of the cells in the partition inactive. An inactive cell is either powered off, or in a state prior to boot-level control (prior to BCH/EFI), defined as “waiting on SINC_BIB”.

IMPORTANT: If you shut down a partition for 24 hours or more, you should also power it off to avoid additional charges. To power off the partition, execute the PE command from the system MP.

For HP-UX systems, to configure a partition to “waiting on SINC_BIB”, execute the following command:

  • shutdown -R -H

If you have already shut down your partition without these options, you can still place it into an inactive state by doing one of the following through the GSP interface:

  • Enter the RR command to put the partition in a “waiting on SINC_BIB” state.

  • Enter the PE command to power down all the cells in the partition.

For Windows systems, use a menu path of Start > Shutdown to shut down the Windows partition. Once the partition is shut down you can put it into an inactive state also by using one of the GSP interface commands:

  • Enter the RR command to put the partition in a “waiting on SINC_BIB” state.

  • Enter the PE command to power down all the cells in the partition.

HP receives usage reports from active partitions in your PPU system. Any inactive partitions are identified in the PPU usage reports.

NOTE: At least one partition in the complex must always be active so that usage and inactive partition information can be reported to HP.

Active cell boards, which are assigned to active partitions, must have at least one active core. If your partition does not have any near-term need to have at least one core active per active cell board, then you can do one of the following:

  • Deactivate the partition.

  • Unassign cell boards from partitions. When you unassign a cell board from a partition, all cores on that cell board are inactive. Unassigned cell boards are covered under the baseline usage.

Failed Partitions

When a partition fails, and you no longer want to report any usage for that partition, you can do one of the following through the GSP interface:

  • Reset the failed partition, by entering the RS command.

  • Power down all of the cells in the failed partition by using the PE command.

The other partitions in the complex report the failed partition as inactive.

Dual-core and Inactive Cells

When a partition contains dual-core processors, then if PPU is running on another partition in the complex, PPU may need to make an assumption about the number of cores per processor and report the number of cores for the inactive partition as if it contained single-core processors. (This only affects the value TotalCPUs in the usage report.) For systems running PPU V8, the assumption is made only if all cells in the partition are inactive; if any cell in the partition is active, PPU can determine the correct number of cores per processor for the cells in the partition. For systems running PPU V7, PPU assumes single-core processors for any cell that is inactive in a partition.